State of Decay
by ilunga
Summary: The Republic City has sown the seeds of revolution, or destruction. Legend of Korra.
1. Chapter 1

Listen:

The city is cacophonous, as always. Children are screaming, rickshaws are rattling, friends are speaking.

Listen:

In a large, beautiful building surrounded by a manicured lawn and perfect rows of flowering plum trees, a man is making a speech. He is charismatic, and handsome. Kids love him.

He speaks of discrimination. Of unequal opportunity. His words are reasonable. They resonate deep within his audience. They are the truth.

He begins to tear up, partly for show, and partly for emotion. He tells a story of his father, who never had anything handed to him. He speaks of hard work. He speaks of those who work hard, and those who do not.

And he asks:

Is this fair?

It's not. It never was. It never will be.

Listen:

The speech is over, but there is no silence. First, there is applause, and then there is discussion. There is agreement.

The guests leave the building, and they do not notice the plum-blossoms, or the green grass. Nobody comments on the clouds amassing over the city. Nobody remarks, "A storm is coming."

Listen:

A little boy yelps as a man kicks him out of his way. The man has always been kind to the Republic City's street children, and had given the boy bread on many occasions, for his waterbending tricks.

As the child began to cry, the man's wife looks at their servant.

"We don't want to see this boy near our complex again."

Did you hear it?

That's the sound of a beginning.

And if you listen closely, you can hear its end.


	2. Chapter 2

Botan stared severely through the floorboards above them, one hand clenched into a fist, and the other over his wife's mouth to quiet her sobs.

Chie's gaze was less intense and less focused, and she looked straight ahead of her, at a sliver of basement that was visible from the vestiges of lamplight above. She tried not to listen to what was going on upstairs, but the shattering of glass and splintering of wood was too much to ignore.

"Midori," Botan whispered, "you have to be quiet."

"They don't want us," she cried. "They just want to make us miserable."

Botan looked as though he wanted to say something, but he swallowed it back and looked sadly at wife. After a few seconds, he looked at his daughter and whispered, "Come here, Chie."

The girl jumped as something heavy and crystal broke right above them, and crawled over to her parents. She put her arms around her mother, who sat up and pulled Chie into her chest. She smelled like ylang ylang and bergamot.

The family cried, together, for a long time.

Eventually, the crashes subsided. In the strange silence, each of the family members sat up slowly but said nothing. There was an unsaid agreement to remain in the basement until it was surely safe, but a faint smell permeated through the slats, and Chie jumped up, followed by her father.

Something was burning.

Chie began to climb the ladder but her father found it quicker to just push her up through the tiny trapdoor; she scrambled to her feet and covered her mouth and nose as her eyes began to burn. She ran outside and grabbed a clay pot of water, and struggled to pick it up.

Botan and a neighbor pushed her out of the way and ran inside to put out the small fire, losing half of the water on the trip.

Barefoot, Chie ran atop the shards of broken glass, out to the street. Deep red sunlight oozed low in the east, dulled from the plumes of smoke. She stood still as others ran around her, victims, criminals, and bystanders.

Her family's wasn't the only business broken and burned; fires, worse than the small blaze on her rug, raged and consumed whole buildings. Some people rushed to put them out. Most didn't.

Botan stepped out of their house, and it was only then that Chie noticed that she was crying and her feet were bleeding. She looked at her father helplessly, and he picked her up and brought her inside and upstairs to where the family lived. Chie was laid down on her bed, her legs hanging far off of it. Her father put down a wide, shallow bowl beneath her feet. Chie had used it to hold hairpins and combs, which Botan had taken care to step around as he walked around his daughter's bedroom.

Nothing else needed to be broken, tonight.

Her small brown eyes stung and her face felt very hot. Chie wasn't sure whether her tears were for her family or her feet, but either way, she counted in her head and tried to wipe them away with her wrist. The room would have been silent, had it not been for her cries and the dissonance outside.

"I'm going to go next door and see if Harshal can do something about this. iStay there,/i" said Botan. Chie inhaled sharply at the thought—Harshal was a doctor, but not a bender, and his methods involved stringent ointments, forceps, and hours.

Her father ignored this, and Chie was alone. After a few seconds of listening, she opened her eyes and sprang up.

She first examined her room, sadly. Her windows and mirror were broken; her dresser had been overturned and the contents had spilled; the mattress she sat on was halfway off its broken frame. Chie would have gone to begin picking up her things, but she knew it would be messy and painful, and going against her father's orders. She took another sweeping, sad glance around her rooms before sighing, hiking up her nightrobe, and crossing her legs.

With one ankle on the other leg's thigh, she examined her injured foot, which had begun to throb as well as burn. Chie had grasped one large piece between her index finger and thumb, but right as she had started to tug, she heard another crash and panicked. She managed to muffle her scream by biting her lip, and before Chie got the chance to run downstairs and go back into the basement, she realized it wasn't the Gong Xun. It was her father.

He was cursing loudly as he walked into the house and had thrown down an already-broken piece of china.

Chie sank back down into her bed.

Midori yelled, "You made me think they came back for the rest of our things!"

"Harshal! The little rat won't come out of his house to help anybody, not even the ones who are seriously hurt. His house doesn't even have a scratch on it!"

"He's not a bender," said the woman quietly, as if the Gong Xun's motives were a secret from her daughter and the neighbors.

"And that gives him the right to ignore everything going on around here?"

"No. It doesn't."

Chie looked to her shattered window. It was daylight now; she had been up all night. It had quieted down outside and Chie, with her body halfway off her bed and her home in shambles, covered her face with a pillow and drifted off to sleep.

**A/N: Thanks to Unknown for reviewing. I fixed the mistake. (:**


	3. Chapter 3

Less than an hour later, Chie was closely watching the boy knelt at the foot of her bed. He had her ankle in one hand, a pair of tweezers in the other, and a concentrated look on his face.

Since he had cut off all feeling and control of her legs from the knee down, and Chie had no need to complain, she had taken to staring at him critically as he worked.

He introduced himself as Hinto.

"Nobody else was hurt too badly," he told her as he picked out the pieces of glass. "It's mostly just property damage. They're trying to scare people."

"I think it worked," said Chie, quietly.

"This place wasn't hit as badly as most of the others, at least. This must have been one of the last places the Gong Xun came to."

The shards chimed as they hit the porcelain bowl.

Hinto looked up at Chie. His eyes were blue. "Your family runs a jewelry shop, right?"

"Yes."

"Was much of it stolen?"

Chie shook her head, which was resting lightly on the palm of her hand. "We keep our work in the basement until it's picked up," She exhaled. "They were all personal possessions that were taken; but mostly, everything was just destroyed." Her voice was soft and flat.

Hinto nodded in understanding; Chie's bedroom had not yet been cleaned. Clothing was strewn across the floor and doused in lamp oil and cosmetics. Her walls had knives run through them. "I think that's it," he said, grabbing one ankle and examining it once more, and then repeating this on the other. Chie's legs tingled and she could feel the dead weight.

He bent some water out of a wooden bowl and wrapped it around one of Chie's feet.

"Do you live near here?"

"No," Hinto said, not taking his eyes off of the task at hand. "I'm on the other side of the Quanzi River."

He looked up to her at this point, and saw the disdain in her face before she was able to hide it, and then went back to healing her lacerations as he chuckled quietly and shook his head.

"Sorry."

"I understand."

Chie took this moment to look at the ceiling."Did the Gong Xun come to your neighborhood?"

"If they did, I left prior to it," he said. "I was near here when they came."

"Why are you still here, then? Aren't you worried about your family?"

"They can take care of themselves," Hinto shrugged; he would have been lying had he answered her question straight. "You can't. I think my priorities are well-aligned."

Chie frowned.

"What I'm worried about," said the waterbender, just as Chie had grown comfortable with the silence, "is that any day now, intimidation isn't going to be enough for them."

"That wasn't just intimidation."

Hinto bent the water back into its bowl and stood. "Says the girl from the good part of town," he said, half-smiling and with an almost maternal tone. "Your feet are done, and you'll be able to walk without pain once the numbness goes away. Should I tell your mother that you're sleeping?"

She nodded, and yawned as if the very word isleep/i had reminded her that she was in desperate need of it. "You can take a silver piece, if you'd like."

He picked one up off of the floor, smiled, and left Chie's bedroom, closing the door behind him. Botan was heard on the upper level, muttering to himself as he picked up torn pieces of family portraits and fine silks. He could repair anything gold or marble, but some things couldn't be replaced.

Hinto knocked lightly on the wall as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Midori was still in her storefront, poring over the records that had been spewed across the room or scorched with the fire. She was fretting over the existential question of what a bookkeeper was without any books when she heard the Water Tribe boy.

"Your daughter's okay," he told her, "Sleeping. She gave me this, but I think—"

"Keep it," said Midori, "Material things are the least of my worries, right now."

The woman turned her attention back to the books; Hinto nodded and bowed to her back, and left the store.

The streets were a sad sight, though they had cleared and calmed since he had last been outside. He soaked in the wreckage, and the juxtaposition between it and the pristine.

Hinto crossed the South Quanzi Bridge on foot, running his fingers against the chain-links that filled the gaps between the hangers and minding the narrow gap between the train tracks and himself. With his newfound wealth, he bought a large container of pancit and pocketed the leftover copper pieces.

It wasn't long after he entered his stomping grounds that he was greeted.

"Hinto!" shouted the boy as he ran towards the waterbender.

"Meelo," Hinto sighed, before the nine-year-old latched his arms around the older boy's waist and looked up at him. Meelo shuffled awkwardly to keep up with Hinto in his position.

"_Hinto_," he said again, "I thought you were _dead_. I thought they _got _you last night. I went to your house and you weren't _there _and—"

"Meelo."

"What?"

"Get off of me," ordered Hinto flatly, but the younger boy did not listen, and remained holding onto Hinto.

Meelo looked at Hinto with wide, gray eyes."Yun told me I would probably never see you _ever again_."

"Never listen to Yun. Get off of me."

He didn't.

**A/N: CyclonePsycho, thanks for reviewing. (: And thank you for the compliments. I'm trying to improve my writing and figure out where this is going, haha.**


	4. Chapter 4

"Whoah, can I get in on this?" asked Kiet, not moving from his sleeping mat as Hinto pushed open the house's front door.

"No."

Meelo did, at this point, get off of Hinto for the purposes of inspecting the food he had put down. When he saw that there was pork in it, he hesitated, and then decided to let it be and sat cross-legged near the doorway.

Hinto collapsed near Kiet's feet and let his head fall back against the blank wall. He sighed and moved a kerosene lamp off of its shaky perch and onto the floor, then held his hand a few inches over the top of its neck to warm his fingers. With the shutters closed, it was the only thing that lit the room. Its smell gave Hinto headaches.

Laughing, Kiet turned onto his back and lifted his neck as high as it would go with no support. "So: last night."

"This place doesn't look to bad." The shack was in just its usual state of disarray, and Hinto hadn't noticed any damage done on the exterior, either.

"It's because you can hardly see it from the street," said Meelo factually.

"Give that boy an award," said Kiet, raising his eyebrows; Meelo smiled proudly. He drummed his hands on his bare stomach for a second and then added, "Most of the chaos was outside. Lots of shouting. Lots of crying."

"Huh," said Hinto absentmindedly. "Meelo, hand me the food. Have you heard from Indira?"

Kiet shook his head, and sat up when he saw the box being passed over.

"Do you think she's okay?"

"I'm sure she's fine," said Kiet, mouth already full with the noodles he'd taken with his bare hands.

Hinto thought as more and more of his food was being taken, and finally decided, "I'm going to go and check on her."

"_Hinto_," groaned Kiet, rolling his eyes. "Stop worrying. She's fine."

"No. I'm going."

Kiet pulled Hinto back down so that they were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder again. "Meelo, you go check on her."

"Okay!" Meelo shouted, jumping up enthusiastically. ("He's in love," whispered Kiet to Hinto.) "I'll be back and I'll tell you if she's okay and maybe I'll bring her back with me but it depends. Bye!"

"Bye," sang Kiet. When the door slammed shut again, he sighed. "No wonder his father lets him wander all over the place."

Meelo held behind his back a flowering wild carrot plant, roots and dirt still attached, as he walked tentatively around the house where Indira and her mother lived. _Firebender _was written across its front with brownish-red paint, and the thin metal roofing was piled up in front of it.

"Indira?" he called. He lifted up one of the shingles and looked under it. "Indiria/i!"

He stepped through the back door slowly. He fixed a turned-over chair and called her name again. He poked his head through every door in the house, and found no one.

After a few seconds' hesitation, Meelo sprinted out of her house in the direction back towards where Kiet and Hinto lived.

He threw the door open and prepared a lament of his search for Indira, but when he looked inside, Meelo found her already sitting across from the two other boys. So instead, he walked inside quietly and sat next to her. Her head was buried between her knees. He put the flowers down next to the firebender.

"She barely touched him," said Indira; her voice was shaking in a mixture of anger and sadness, but she hadn't been crying.

"Did they tell you where they were taking her?" asked Kiet, voice uncharacteristically soft.

Indira shook her head but didn't lift it up.

"Or how long?"

Indira lifted her head up, and her amber eyes stared hopelessly at the waterbender. "She _assaulted _a Gong Xun member, Hinto. She'll never get out." She put her head back down when she felt tears pushing against her eyes.

Nobody knew what to say.

Everybody knew what happened to the Gong Xun's prisoners.

"Meelo," said Hinto finally, awkwardly tousling his dark hair and looking at the younger boy. "Maybe you should go home."

Meelo pouted, but did as he was told with no contest. He took a last glance to Indira before sulking outside. A few Gong Xun members, in their uniform black robes with the Xun party's gold crest—differentiating them from common gangs, stood on the shaded side of the street. Meelo avoided eye contact and walked back to his home on the water outside the Republic City.

**A/N: Why haven't I been updating? I have this on another website and I've been updating the story on there, but for some reason, not here. I'm sorry about that. **

**CyclonePsycho - It's not that I didn't know where it was going; I just didn't know where it was going to end. I've decided on that now, though. (: Chie is thirteen here, but (spoiler alert? I don't really think so, but) there's a time skip coming up soon that will make her a bit older.**

**KurrydaJellydonut: Thank you! And oh no, you caught me! I got a lot of this story from different times and places in history. (Don't worry, it won't be following that path.)**


	5. Chapter 5

_**Interludes**_

It was a strange form of earthbending that Botan and Chie used on the bejeweled headdress that was due to be ready by the next day. The hard rubies required rigid hand-movements that would require stillness for minutes at a time for the slightest of changes, while soft, quick movements molded the gold into its required shape—the metalbending would have been exceptional, had it not been on such a soft metal in such a trivial task.

The knocks on the door distracted Chie and Botan from their work, but as Midori rushed into the room repeating, "I've got it; I've got it," they turned back to the headdress. And again, when she sighed, "Oh, no," they looked up and stopped working, and this time walked to her side.

Through the single, small pane of glass that hadn't been broken all those nights ago, Midori, and then her husband, and then her daughter, could see a Gong Xun member staring expectantly at the door in front of him. Chie backed up timidly, and Midori opened the door.

The Gong Xun man waited for Botan to come into sight, and handed him a powder-blue sheet of paper; his face grew angrier as his eyes descended the lines, and he finally crumpled the paper in one hand, threw it down, and stepped towards the man who was still standing outside. "You can't do this," he said seriously, a look of heavy restraint on his face.

"Those are the orders," said the man placidly. "Should there be any changes in the plans, we will inform you as soon as possible." He turned and left to deliver another paper; Botan stormed after him.

He was yelling, now. "This isn't legal! Come back here! I swear, if I see Minister Geming—"

Midori had pulled her husband back into the house, and slammed the door behind you. "Do you want them to take you away, too?" she screamed.

Chie picked up the wrinkled sheet of paper from the floor, flattened it on her work bench, and read it.

_Following the events of the night of the first day of the sixth month of the Virtuous Harmony Ox Year, and by order of Minister Xun Geming, and for the safety of all peoples of the Republic City, this decree:_

_Benders of all elements will be moved from districts one, four, and five and relocated into districts two and three; all non-benders in districts two and three will be relocated outside of these future bender-only neighborhoods. All benders must register with their local…_

She looked up at her parents. They looked down at the floor.

* * *

"It says," continued Kiet, dragging on his words as he traced under the first characters with his fingers, "we have to be out of here in, like, three weeks."

"Huh."

"And," he started again, "they're subsidizing the houses. I guess it's okay if we get to take their money."

"Yeah, I guess so," sighed Hinto.

* * *

Miles away, in the middle of a lake that was just outside of the Republic City's jurisdiction, Meelo knelt beside his father on the bare floor in a room that was empty and uninhabited, for most of the year. His nose and eyes burned with the smoke from the star anise incense that was smoking above an old portrait of a man not much older than his own father. He stayed, though, because he enjoyed watching his father do this sort of thing—the sort of thing that, he supposed, he would do when his father died.

He remained quiet out of respect, and tried not to stare.

Finally, Tenzin licked his thumb and index finger and stuffed the incense out. He laid it aside and rolled his father's portrait up, and put everything back under the small altar the room had been built around. They stood and left.

"Do you know how long ago your grandfather died?" Tenzin asked, walking over to the window that, if one squinted, had the Republic City in view.

Meelo shook his head.

"Sixteen years…" said Tenzin, and paused. Meelo looked out at the city alongside his father, who had heard Meelo's secondhand accounts of the events that had occurred earlier that month. Tenzin put his hand on his son's shoulder. "Any day now."

"You think he'll help them?"

"I hope so," answered Tenzin as he began down the corridor, leaving his son looking after him. When he turned into a room, Meelo looked back out the window. Across the water and beside the mountains lied the Republic City.

"I'm going out, Dad."

"Be safe."

* * *

Xun Geming stood, bent with old age, at the podium. His voice shook, a little, but carried well. ("This is why we need term limits," Botan had whispered to his wife, when their leader had first taken to the stage. Chie had refused to go, and sat, sulking in her new bedroom, during the entire speech.)

"Let me assure you," he said, "that meaningless violence and the behavior of the first was not my original intent of the Gong Xun," His words sounded sincere and emotional. The old man had no reason to lie. "The men who organized the event are being stripped of their titles and punished as seen fit for their crimes."

Indira's arms were crossed over her chest. She sat on the curb beside Hinto and Kiet, near an unclear speaker that occasionally made a deafening pop. None of them were paying any attention, except for when the sound would snap them out of their conversation and, as they rubbed their ears, the minister's words were heard clearly.

"…Is for the best of everybody in the city, a necessary evil, if you will," said Geming. "My hopes are that after the conflict quells, this city will be able to return to the vision that Avatar Aang had when he created it—a city of peace, goodwill, and brotherhood." He stopped speaking and looked down almost sadly, and the conversations in the crowd grew louder and louder.

Meelo had slipped through every gap in the crowd he could find, and had found himself right in front of the Gong Xun's barrier. He looked up at the city's leader.

"Unfortunately, this will be a journey that I will not make with the city. These events have shown me that, perhaps, I am no longer qualified to run this republic any longer."

The crowd was uproarious.

"I would like to use this opportunity," said Geming, and waited, because he could hardly hear himself speak. "To announce the new leader of the Xun party, and the candidate whom I urge you to vote for: my niece, Xun Wei Bei."

The crowd, again, overpowered even the hulking speakers. Botan was screaming, to his wife and anyone would listen, "Do you see what they're doing? They're gerrymandering us! The whole reason for this move was for politics!" Meelo was pushed into a Gong Xun agent by the man behind him, and was thrown by his arm back into the crowd. Hinto stood as the situation grew more and more out of hand.

"We should go back to the tenement."

"Definitely."

Atop the stage, next to her uncle and protected by her Gong Xun, stood Xun Wei Bei, a woman with a cool demeanor and a severe sort of beauty. She watched, unmoving, as the violence unfolded around her, even as her uncle was shuffled offstage by his advisors and for his safety. She followed behind him calmly, and as she walked down the stairs, she muttered something to the agent who escorted her.

"They shouldn't act like animals, if they don't want to be put into a cage."


	6. Chapter 6

"Good morning, Shi Yaozu," greeted Chie, twirling a parasol around in her fingers, though the sun hadn't yet risen, and the tungsten lights perched in lamps high above the city streets weren't known to do any harm to the complexion. A heavy, woven basket hung from her forearm.

"Miss Chie," the young Gong Xun responded cordially. "Papers, please."

Chie had already taken her identification from her cloth-covered basket. Next to her name, age, address, the word _earthbender_, and her father's name, was a blurry, sepia-toned photograph taken a year ago when the identification was issued. She didn't look any different, and Yaozu handed it back to her. A red stamp, indicating her freedom to move about the city, was nestled in its bottom-right corner.

Yaozu, in turn, showed his to Chie, though he didn't let go of it. It read _non-bender_ and _seventeen _and _Gong Xun_. His rank was low—one of those that were only created after Gong Xun membership became available for young non-benders who hoped to one day be in the party, or at least receive its benefits.

"You got a new photograph," noted Chie, who then tilted her head to the side and looked between the card and the boy himself. "Did you blink or something?"

He pulled it back into his pocket quickly. "I was about to sneeze. There were no retakes."

Chie laughed softly, and looked to Yaozu for approval. He was smiling slightly, a bit embarrassed, perhaps, as he took a beat-up watch from his pocket and checked the time. She wouldn't be allowed across the bridge until six. "You're here early," he remarked.

"The neighbors have a baby," she lied, "You can hear them from my bedroom."

"Shame."

"Really," The silence lingered, apart from the buzzes and whirs that were omnipresent in the city. Yaozu kept his eyes on the pocket watch, if only because he had nothing else to look at. Chie could see her breath in the air when she spoke. "I could fix that for you, you know."

"This old thing?" he held it up nonchalantly by the chain. Chie nodded, and Yaozu looked at it. "It's metal."

"I know," She held up the basket which, while covered, Yaozu knew was filled with jewelry. "It's a part of my job."

Yaozu looked as though he was about to hold it out for her, but he drew his hand back. "I really shouldn't."

"I understand."

The ground—or rather, the metal that held the bridge to the ground—beneath the two began to rattle, and Yaozu looked at his watch, then pulled a lever that caused a trio of red lights to blink, one after another. The light rail cars zoomed past them in a mere second, but Chie still looked up and through the windows, attempting to make out faces in the seats. But it went by, as always, too quickly, and was out of sight before she could mourn her failure.

"It's six and a half hours," said Yaozu as he pushed the heavy bar back to its normal position. The lights went off. "You're free to go."

"Goodbye, Shi Yaozu," said Chie, almost singing as she set off to make her deliveries in the non-bending district of the Republic City.

"Chie, Chie, Chie!" Meelo called, to which Chie responded by stopping and turning around on the sidewalk. Meelo, who had been running, as usual, slowed to a halt just in front of the fifteen-year-old. He breathed rapidly and held a finger up; Chie pulled him to the side of the pathway, and an older man muttered something as he angrily passed him. Meelo stared at him with his tongue out for a few seconds before turning back to the task at hand. "Have you made your deliveries yet?"

"No. Walk with me," Meelo did. It was midday, now, and the sidewalks were busy enough with pedestrians that the two benders were causing a disturbance to the flow. The streets hosted a strange mixture of mechanized vehicles and those still pulled by animals. Chie had to raise her voice higher than she found acceptable to speak. "What are you doing around here?"

Meelo just shrugged, his attention turning away from the girl and towards a man who was pulling strings of honey to wrap and sell for the growing crowd around his sweets cart. Chie pulled him along by his sleeve.

"I have money," he whined.

"You aren't even supposed to be here."

"I've got a non-citizen I.D.," he argued. "It doesn't say whether I'm a bender."

Chie sighed. "Well mine does," She had tried to hush her voice.

Meelo looked down, beginning to gain the familiar feeling that he was being bothersome.

They turned a corner onto a less populated street, and Chie suggested, "We can stop on the way back."

He smiled, and gained a spring back into his step. "Kiet's thinking of quitting his job."

"Everybody at the factories is thinking about quitting."

Meelo shrugged, though Chie wasn't looking towards him. "I think he should. Hinto should, if he wants, but Big Sister Jo is nice and he doesn't have to do much. I tried looking for him but apparently he's out, over here somewhere. That's why I found you. You know, these non-benders seem to hate us unless we can do something for them. What are you delivering?"

"Just some armlets and anklets. Probably for performers."

"Oh."

Chie nodded absently and squinted to see the street signs, so that she wouldn't have to stop later on.

"You need glasses," said Meelo.

"No."

Meelo rolled his eyes.

They stopped in front of a large complex, with intricate filigree on the wrought iron fence and two words emblazoned in calligraphy on top. Meelo made a sour sort of face upon reading it, and Chie tried her best to hold it back.

"Really?" he asked flatly, not letting his eyes rip away from the words on the fence.

"Yup."

"I hope they paid you a _lot_."

"Nope."

"I can't believe your father let you take this order."

"He doesn't know it's for them," said Chie, looking down at the younger boy. She then looked around, as if someone she knew would be near her, and added, "Don't tell anybody, okay?"

"Right."

Chie inhaled and swallowed, and crossed the street when it was clear. Meelo stayed back, unsure about whether he wanted to enter. "Come on, Meelo," she whispered loudly from the middle of the street. A man in an automobile spewing black smoke raised an eyebrow. "It's more dangerous for you to be loitering."

Meelo crossed over quickly, and the driver sped up.

The two benders crossed under the archway, the words iXun Family/i stretched over its top, provokingly.


	7. Chapter 7

Hinto fiddled with the hem of his shirt as he watched those in front of him in line being searched and patted down; he and Indira were quickly ascending the queue.

He would have never agreed to this if it wasn't for one of his friends.

Indira was in front of him, and was siphoned out of the line by a female guard, to whom Indira gave all her possessions and held her arms up for. She was searched for weapons and whatever else wasn't allowed inside the jail, and then sent off into the hallway to the room's right. She made a motion that told Hinto she would be waiting for him.

A pale, older man grabbed Hinto as if he were a piece of machinery being snatched from an assembly line. He set down his water skin, identification, and credentials on a table; the man searched them and Hinto held his arms up—another man felt around for contraband. The senior guard opened the skin's top and sniffed it.

"It's water," said Hinto.

"You can't bring liquids inside," he said flatly, turning the container upside down so that the water poured out and into a grate on the floor. The guard pushed it back into Hinto's chest. "You can fill it up at the tap. Go."

Hinto grabbed his things, nodded, backed away, and turned around clumsily to get out of the inspection room as quickly as possible. He was stopped at a drinking fountain that trickled dingy water when Indira came up to him.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't know about that rule. Never tried it before.:"

"It's alright."

He screwed the cap back on and followed Indira through the concrete and iron labyrinth that was the Republic City's largest prison. It was the first of the week and, therefore, visiting day; Hinto kept his eyes on the top of Indira's head to not get lost in the crowd; it wasn't doing him much good, even though he was easily one of the tallest people in the corridor.

When Indira turned to check on him, she saw the overwhelmed look on his face and grabbed his hand. She guided him through the crowd, their two-person chain bumping into anybody they came near, which resulted into a series of angry shouts at them.

"Just ignore them," instructed Indira.

Numbered signs were hung above doorways at both the left and the right. E_ven numbers are for women_, Indira had told him before they even left the benders' ghetto. _My mom's cell is in number four._

Indira saw the fourth sign before Hinto did, and led him through it. This corridor was still crowded, though less chaotic, with men, women, and children leaning against walls, walking in circles, or sitting in the middle of the bare floor. A line had formed, stretching down the center of the room nearly to the back, and Hinto and Indira joined it. At each "next", the people in front of them took a few weary steps forward. Indira spoke quietly so as not to disturb the dull murmur of background noise.

"Please don't look surprised when you see her. Or sad, or worried."

"I know, Indira," he said, carefully trying to avoid the condescending tone that accompanied most of his words. He didn't add iI've done this before/i to the end.

"I don't want her to think she's sick."

"She knows she's sick."

Indira gave Hinto a look, but neither of them quite knew what it meant.

They eventually reached the front of the line. Indira slipped her and Hinto's I.D.'s onto the desk; on the back of Hinto's card, a stamp signified his license to practice healing. "We're here to see Soonee."

The woman at the desk looked at a piece of paper and said, flatly, "Go now; she's in the very back, on the right." Indira looked confused, but quickly grabbed up the worn pieces of paper and left down the hallway with Hinto. "Next," the woman called.

"Usually," said Indira slowly, looking in front of her with her brows knit tight. "You have to wait. Hours, sometimes. And my mom's cell isn't in the back."

"Why would they move her?" asked Hinto casually, hardly interested in the answer at all.

Indira stopped. "Oh, no."

Before Hinto could ask what was wrong, Indira sped to almost a jog.

He hurried after her and stopped at her side as a guard opened a heavy metal door.

"What?" asked Hinto.

"They put her in a cell alone. That's what's back here. She must be really bad."

"Oh."

Soonee, Indira's mother, was lying on her side and smiled serenely when the two teenagers walked in. As Hinto pulled a lone, bare chair closer to the woman, Indira rushed to her mother's bedside and embraced her. "This is Hinto," she told Soonee. "He's a waterbender, and a very good healer. He's going to help you."

"Hello, Hinto," said the middle-aged woman, her hair and skin dull from ill health.

"Hello," he replied, smiling. The guard stood in the doorway and looked on. "Should I wait or—"

"No," Indira replied quickly. "Start now."


	8. Chapter 8

The walk back to their apartment building was slow and quiet, despite all the noise around them. Indira walked with her arms tightly wrapped around her chest and her shoulders pulled up to her jaw; she refused to speak. Hinto kept quiet, too, and walked slowly to remain at her side—when Indira had fled her mother's room after the prognosis he gave, Soonee asked one thing of Hinto: "Keep her out of trouble; keep her safe."

Hinto doubted he would be able to fulfill those wishes with a girl like Indira, but he agreed despite this, and left with her.

Indira lived two floors below Hinto's apartment, and dropped off with a quiet "Thanks."

"Hello?" Hinto called after unlocking and opening his front door.

"We're in here!" called Kiet from his bedroom.

Hinto closed the door behind him and asked, "We?" under his breath. The question was answered when he saw Meelo and Chie sitting with Kiet on the floor. He got on the floor next to Chie.

"Kiet quit," said Meelo immediately, as if he'd been holding it since Hinto first walked in.

"Good," said Hinto, which wasn't the reaction that Meelo had expected, though he wasn't unhappy about it. "Being hunched over in a dirty building like that isn't good for you," He yawned; he'd woken up very early this morning to accompany Indira to the prison. "Your back problems would have gotten worse if you stayed any longer."

Kiet raised his eyebrows, searching for a hint of passive-aggressiveness in Hinto's voice. He didn't find any. "Alright, Mom," he said, standing up carefully with the help of the wall behind him. Hinto rolled his eyes and shook his head at the nickname. "I'll start looking for another job, eventually."

"Sure," said Hinto, a bit uncaring; Kiet holding down a job was mostly for the purposes of staying out of trouble and being allowed outside of the bending districts, wherein vagrants were confined. Kiet lumbered out of his bedroom and Hinto readjusted his position on the floor. "Why are you two here?"

Meelo shrugged.

"Nothing to do at home," said Chie.

"Where's Indira?" asked Meelo.

"Her apartment," said Hinto, and when he saw that Meelo was preparing to stand, he added, "Sick and contagious. Stay up here."

The airbender pouted and flopped back down with a thud. "But I'm _bored_," he whined.

"Then _do something_," said Chie, exhaling and examining a loose thread on her robe. She rolled her eyes only once she was confident that she was looking down enough that no one would see.

An awkward sort of silence fell over the room, and each person waited for Kiet's return. A series of forceful knocks on the apartment's front door, to the tune of a Fire Nation folk song, turned all heads towards the bedroom's own doorway.

"Got it!" shouted Kiet, though before even a second passed, Hinto got to his feet and left the room. Meelo, and then Chie, soon followed. By the time they all congregated in the living room, Kiet had only just limped to the door and began to open it.

A familiar boy stood behind the threshold. He began speaking without any formalities, not even entering the apartment. "I figured you would all be in here," Yun made no acknowledgement that they were short one person. "Anyways, word on the street is that something's going down tonight. Everyone should stay inside," He singled out Chie, and made a motion with his thumb. "Your parents want you home, now."

Chie's face showed a bit of disappointment and embarrassment, but she didn't question or object; and she told Meelo to go home now or stay the night with Kiet and Hinto before saying her goodbyes. As she walked into the hallway, she saw the red cord tied around Yun's wrist and tried to ignore it.

He followed her down the hallway.

"Are you going back home now, too?" asked Chie.

"Nope."

Chie got an uneasy feeling in her stomach, something that happened often when around Hongse.

It was situations like this where Chie told herself that the Hongse were just petty criminals, loosely organized and hardly threatening, though she knew it was untrue.

It was unfortunate that they were the neighborhood's best defense against the Gong Xun.

Yun had the type of build and face where, even at nineteen, he could pass as either a very pretty girl or a very handsome boy, and as he led Chie out of the apartment building (reserved for broken families and orphans, as _structure_ was very important to this whole operation), Chie found herself wondering what he would ever do if something were to scar his face.

He felt her small, dark gaze on the back of his head, and swept his long black hair over one shoulder. It worked to move Chie's eyes onto the peeling, yellowing hallway walls.

They walked into a black, caged elevator and stood in silence. Chie tried her best to maintain her footing in the rickety box. She stumbled, a little, as it hit the ground floor.

The streets were, unsurprisingly, mostly vacant, except for a few walking quickly and quietly, probably to their own homes.

People listened to the Hongse, for their safety—whether it was the Gong Xun or the Hongse itself threatening it.

Yun followed Chie into her house, but only to give a brief greeting to her father. Botan, however, insisted that he would stay for dinner; Yun agreed to tea.

**A/N: Sorry for not replying to your reviews; everything from this site has been going straight into my spam folder. I promise I love and appreciate them greatly, though.**

**KurrydaJellydonut - Thanks!**

**Dip - I'm basing this off quite a few events in history, not just WWII. But I am drawing parallels and I'm glad you noticed. **

**MeeloXKorra - Thank you so much. (: I try to keep up with all the LoK news and it looks like I'm already diverging from what Bryke has released, but whatever-we have until 2012 to see how wrong I am.**


	9. Chapter 9

The usual proceedings followed:

Botan asked Yun how his father was; Yun replied that he was doing well. They talked about the past election, how Botan surely won the representative position. He thanked Yun, and by extension, Yun's father, and by extension, the Hongse, for their help in Botan's campaign.

They griped about the district's current representative, an imbecile named Quy, who sold out to the Xun party in exchange for a rigged election and a large home. They talked about education, and how it was a shame that children from bending families, according to a recent Fire Nation study, attended six years less of school than those with no benders in their family.

"And it's only going to get worse from here," Botan said, leaning back.

Chie went upstairs, to her bedroom, only a few minutes after returning home. She sat in her bedroom for over an hour, looking out the window, anticipating something exciting and dangerous and catastrophic to happen.

Yun left, and when it was an hour later and well past dark, the only new development was a heavy snowfall, with flakes so large that they tapped against the glass window panes. And though it was, except for those taps, a completely silent night, Chie stayed up even longer; she knew to cherish the new, pure white world that the winter's first large snow brought because by morning, it would turn into a brown, icy mixture of sand, soot, and snow. She fell asleep after it was clear the Hongse's warning was a false alarm.

Botan was asleep downstairs, in a chair beside the stairwell—ready to run up at the first sound of trouble to get to his wife and daughter. Chie rubbed his shoulder in the softest way possible, so as not to startle him. It didn't work, and he jumped awake; Chie backed off quickly. "It's just me," she breathed.

"Oh," her father said with a sigh. "It's morning?"

Chie nodded.

Midori walked into the room, looking tired already. "I was trying to let you sleep. You don't have any new orders."

Botan shook his head. "No, no, Chie has deliveries to make, and I'm still working on some old orders."

"Well, you go get dressed, Chie," said Midori, and Chie obeyed. "Bring down some money for the waterbenders."

"Hinto will unfreeze the pipes for free," Chie said, turning around on the stairs, only to be met with her mother's disapproving face. "Okay."

The clothes that Chie wore for going out in the snow were mostly her father's—ones that were too small on him or weren't fit to be worn in public. She combated this with a flannel, unembellished kimono that covered everything but the bottom of her boots and hid the family's inability to continue buying clothes for a growing sixteen-year-old daughter.

Chie tried her best not to mind, though she missed the furs and silks that she used to dress in.

A quick, hot, breakfast was shared. Between small blurbs of conversation, only the radiator made noise. The spices made Chie especially warm underneath all her layers, so she left the house quickly with her deliveries, passport, and directions.

After the morning's late start, Chie was not surprised to see someone other than Yaozu handling the western side of the bridge. She was surprised, however, to be waved out of line by the boy after handing him her passport. She did as she was told and stepped off to the side. The boy in line, between allowing people in the queue to go, called out, "Shi, c'mere!"

Yaozu ambled out of the bridge's operator box. Chie watched him carefully, unsure of what was going on. Yaozu smiled and held up a hand to the other boy, who turned back to checking the benders' passports. "Hello, Miss Chie."

"Hi," Chie said, voice cracking. She cleared her throat. "Hello, I mean," She made a motion that encompassed the whole situation. "Is there something wrong?"

The Gong Xun member waited a few seconds before answering. "Oh, no; just an order."

"An order when nothing's wrong?"

He gave her a smile, which faltered for a moment before it picked back up. "Yes, exactly; I'm supposed to take you to meet with Xun Deng."

"Is he part of the family?"

Yaozu laughed, "No, no, just a party member," He looked around surreptitiously and added, "I don't think I'd be able to take you to a member of the Xun family."

Chie smiled weakly and began to follow Yaozu, who had started walking. "Do you know that this is about?"

"I think I may."

They crossed the bridge as Chie ran through various situations in her head. The most likely explanation, she decided, was that this was concerning her father. She asked Yaozu if it was true.

"No," he said, stopping on the curb at the first major intersection in the non-bending side of the bridge. He held out a hand and waited. "I really shouldn't be talking about it," After a few seconds, he sighed and began to walk. "No taxis out on the ice today."

"I don't mind walking."

"It's a long way," said Yaozu, eyes scanning across the roads for something to give them a ride, "We're going to the metropolitan area."

"What for?" asked Chie, trying her luck.

"That's where the party headquarters are."

**A/N: Sorry for not uploading a chapter last weekend. I've got a lot of chapters written ahead, though, so you can expect regular updates. Reviews are loved.**


	10. Chapter 10

The Xun Party buildings were near the center of the city, the part that tourists and businessmen frequented but Chie seldom went. Every building around her towered high above her head and she felt claustrophobic from the deficit of sky above her.

They entered a skyscraper made of tan brick labeled only with the number four. A man in gray attended the elevator; when they reached the desired floor, he wished the pair a nice day and they were handed over to the secretary, who only made time for speaking after hitting the return key on her typewriter.

"You Shi Yaozu?"

He nodded.

"And that's the earthbending girl?"

He nodded again.

The woman typed until the end of her paragraph came; she then stood and walked into a room behind a wooden door. After a few moments, she returned. "Xun Deng will see you now."

He was a tall, tan man in his twenties or thirties in the office. There was more window than wall, and as Chie watched the gray clouds move over the grayer city, he relieved Yaozu of his duty and asked Chie to sit down.

"So how's the family business going?" asked Deng, circling around the room like a wolf-vulture.

"Well," Chie said quickly.

Deng nodded. "That's wonderful. Been very busy?"

"Yes."

He sat down across from her, leaned over, and smiled, close-lipped and wide. "You don't need to lie to me, Chie. It's true that you've lost quite a bit of business in the past few years, isn't it?"

"It is," She looked at the ground.

"Sorry to hear it," He stood up again, "That's not what we're here for, today; but at least you've learned to tell me the truth, and I've learned a little about you. It's a fine start," He stopped, as if waiting for Chie to respond, but she didn't. "I've got this paper, you see. It's a report. I won't read it all to you; it's not necessary, to be honest. We waste a lot of paper here. It starts off with Shi Yaozu—I believe he's the one who escorted you here. Then it gets to you. It has your parents, your age, your dress, and your passport number. You're an earth bender; my grandfather was from Omashu."

Deng took a deep breath; Chie felt strangely comfortable towards Deng already, as if he wasn't a member of the Xun party.

"Now, it says here that you made a passing remark to Shi Yaozu about the ability to bend metal."

"I did."

"Was this a valid claim?"

"Yes."

He smiled, showing a set of straight, white teeth. "Oh my, that's impressive. Most people can't do that."

Chie's face turned red and she stumbled over her words. "It's not, really. Gold and silver are really soft and they're already refined for us, and I'm only a jeweler. I haven't even been making anything lately."

"But that's no problem," said Deng as he fell out of Chie's sight; his orbit around her went quickly. "You must have incredible talent, regardless. May I ask you a favor?"

Chie nodded slowly.

"One moment, please," Deng smiled and winked before leaving her alone in his office. Chie examined the things on his desk: brushes and ink; a stack of papers that had been typed on next to a round, red stamp; a bowl of candies. The door opened behind her. "Here we are," He sat in his chair and held out a thin strip of black metal. "Do you know what this is, Chie? Go on, you can take it if you'd like."

She took it from Deng's hand and examined it. It left a dark powder on her pale hands and Chie could feel very little earth in it. She made a guess. "Iron?"

"Almost," said Deng, wiping his hand off with a damp cloth napkin. "It's steel. Could you bend it?"

Chie shook her head. "No, no, I don't think so," She set the piece of steel down on Deng's desk.

He leaned over close and rested his hand on Chie's. She suddenly felt very calm, despite her quickened breathing. "Could you try? For me?"

She nodded and picked the metal back up, tried to feel the earth in it. There was very little. She and Deng were silent for minutes already when Chie put the steel back on the table. Deng opened his mouth to speak, thinking that she was giving up, but Chie struck a pose that said otherwise. Her fingers were in a bent, painful-looking pose that she kept for what felt like a very long time, until the bar began to shake in its place.

Her arms began to shake, too, from tensing her muscles in an attempt to get the steel to do something more than vibrate.

It worked. The strip first began to levitate, and then folded into a ninety degree angle. At this, Chie dropped her arms and the metal fell with it. Deng smiled. "Can you spare the time for a little chat?"

Tentatively, Chie agreed.

An hour later, Deng escorted Chie out of his office, onto the elevator, and back into the city. Some of the slush on the streets had melted and there was far more traffic on the roads and sidewalks. She wondered how she would find her way back to the city's fifth district, where her delivery was to be made.

"I hope I didn't make you late."

"No," said Chie, "It's fine."

"I do hope you'll think this over, Chie," said Deng, resting a hand on the girl's shoulder, "Feel free to come and see me at any time. I'm here to help."

**A/N: Thank you so much, poniesnpens97! **

**Please review. ;D**


	11. Chapter 11

Indira's apartment was furnished nicely, with rich colors and comfortable furniture. A record player was kept on constantly throughout the day and switched with the radio at nighttime, when dramas and live performances played over the airwaves. The kitchen was unused except for a small portable oven used to heat up water. Her bed was large and squishy, and her closet was huge and full of clothes that she mostly never wore.

She was sorting through them between bursts of conversation. "He was _manipulating_ you, Chie."

Chie's face held a frown that teetered between a range of different emotions, but it was unnoticed as she tried on the clothes that Indira through to her. "Why do you think?"

"Because that's all anybody ever does," she said confidently, "everybody in the entire world," She gave the dresses that were too small to Chie and threw the rest into a pile on what was once a chair. "They just want to get their way."

"Not everybody," She turned around a few times and examined how her waist looked.

Indira shrugged; she didn't want to argue the point. "Maybe not," Neither of the girls spoke for a few minutes, and both got entranced in the music of a famous Fire Nation singer. "Did he offer you anything in return, or was it just sweet talk?"

"He offered a lot of things," Chie sighed, sitting down. Indira turned around to listen more closely. "My whole family could get new passports and they wouldn't say 'bender' on them. We could move back to our old house, or somewhere like it. We'd make a lot more money," She leaned back against the wall.

"Your father would never do that."

"I know," she groaned. "But…"

Indira crawled up to Chie, maneuvering around the obstacles on the floor. "But what?" Chie didn't reply, "Did he threaten you?"

"A little," Indira's jaw dropped as she let out a gasp, and Chie rolled her eyes, sure it was just melodrama."He said his superiors were the ones who set up the meeting, not his, and that metalbenders were really sought after."

"Metalbenders are sought after," said Indira, laughing, "So we're going to lock up all the benders in the slums and make it near impossible to get formal training?"

Chie shook her head, uncertain of what to respond to that. Instead, she continued. "They could take away our passports and evict us. I couldn't let that happen, could I?"

Indira stopped laughing, brought her knees up to her chest, and rested her chin on them. "I don't know," she said quietly. "It's your decision. _Could_ you?"

"I don't want it to be my decision. I like to let other people decide things for me," Chie grumbled. She began to stand.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

Indira stood up to block her way. "No. You can't. You have to think this over more; you can't just tell them. Stay here—we can ask Kiet and Hinto. You can get more opinions."

"Alright."

Chie and Indira did knock on the door, but instead opened it right away. "It's us," Chie called to nowhere in particular. The main room was a mess, and it was obvious that Hinto had been busy.

Kiet poked his head out of his bedroom door, said "Oh," and sat back down. "You can come back here, unless you wanted to clean for me or something."

"Don't patronize us, Kiet," Indira said, frowning, as she came into Kiet's room. She looked around for a safe place to sit. "We have something important to talk about. Chie does, actually."

Chie tried to tell the story as quickly as possible. "A member of the Xun party called me to his office and, since I can bend metal, he wants to hire me to go into an apprenticeship and then eventually work for the city."

"You can't do that," said Kiet less than a second after Chie had finished speaking. "The Xun party never has any good intentions and you'll just be helping them."

Indira nudged Chie to continue, but Chie shook her head; Indira sighed and spoke for her. "The man she talked to said that he could basically take away her family's papers and they wouldn't be allowed to travel around or out of the city; they could probably do more, though."

Chie was about to correct Indira, about how Deng didn't say that _he_ would do it, but a door slammed and everyone in the room jumped at the sudden noise.

Holding a finger up to his lips, Kiet stood and began to walk out of the room, but Hinto's voice stopped him from bothering. "If you're going to talk badly about the Xun party, make sure the doors are closed. I could hear you from the hallway." Hinto took off his coat and boots in the front room and then walked back to Kiet's. "Now why are they going to take away your passport, Chie?"

"They aren't going to take it away, because Chie is going to learn how to bend metal for them."

"No, she won't."

Hinto raised an eyebrow at Chie, who looked down at the floor, embarrassed of her indecision. "What's so bad about learning how to bend metal?"

"The Xuns want her to," said Kiet as if it were obvious.

Hinto shrugged again. "Whatever you want, I guess," Chie groaned at this and Hinto ignored her. "But you could probably be helping more people than the Xuns and your family."

Kiet gasped in sudden realization. "Hinto's right. Chie, listen to me: this city's practically made of metal," He knocked on the wall behind him, which was wooden, for emphasis. "Do you know what you could do if you learned how to bend metal—real metal, I mean? If you could teach other people how?"

"That's not what I meant—" Hinto tried to argue, but he was cut off by Kiet.


	12. Chapter 12

Tenzin got letters. Sometimes they were carried to him by messenger birds, sometimes by a traveler who happened to make the mistake of telling somebody she was on her way to the Republic City, sometimes by a professional mail service.

He let Meelo read them and reply; Tenzin had no interest in his siblings, but Meelo was overtaken by curiosity about his clandestine family. At breakfast, he sat across from his father with a stack of papers, sorted out by relation. Tenzin didn't consider these reports necessary or even wanted, but he complied with a smile for his son's sake.

Today, Meelo went through most of them quickly—Yeshe's daughter was married; Lobsang had no news to report but wrote a letter anyways; Ngawang and his wife had a child, a boy; Jamphel asked about the state of the Republic City and the well-being of Tenzin and Meelo. But Jetsun's letter, Meelo decided, was the most important and he saved it for last.

Tenzin took a bite of a chili-drenched boiled dumpling as he watched his son move the other letters off the table and open the large envelope sent by his brother, Jetsun, a waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe.

Out of the envelope first came a photograph of a girl with dark hair and skin and light eyes, scowling into the camera. Meelo handed it to his father and began to read the letter.

"'You may have read it in the papers already, but my former student, Avatar Korra, has recently mastered the art of firebending. Attached is a picture of her in front of the Fire Nation's palace. Of course, she will next have to be taught airbending by one of our siblings. I recommended that she first see Yeshe at the Western Air Temple.' The rest is boring stuff, though."

The older airbender flipped the picture over to check for writing on the back, but there was none. He turned it back to the front. "She's very young," Using Meelo's age as a reference to his father's death: "Nineteen."

Meelo slid it back to his side of the table and looked at it closely as he ate his breakfast. "Why is Yeshe going to teach her?"

"She's the one who teaches airbending. She instructed me, all four of her children, and most of your cousins. I would say she's the best bender out of all of us."

"Why?"

Tenzin shrugged. "Natural talent. And Dad left her in charge of the Western Air Temple. There wasn't much to salvage and isn't much to preserve. She has a lot of time to practice. She's also the oldest in the family."

"How old is she?"

"Almost sixty."

"Whoah," Meelo wondered what it would be like to have a sister twenty eight years older than him. "Do you like her?"

"I hardly know her."

Meelo frowned. "If I had any siblings, I would know them as much as I could."

"I have five siblings," sighed Tenzin, "There's only so much you can know about each of them," after some thought, he added, "Besides, I'm the youngest. Jamphel was already sixteen when I was born, and she's the next."

"You're twenty years older than me," said Meelo, "I'm close with you."

"That's different."

"Not really."

Tenzin and Meelo stared at each other silently as they ate their food, challenging looks on both of their faces; they each waited for the other to look away. Tenzin gave in first. "And from what I do know, I don't really like most of them."

"_Dad_."

"What? It's true. Why should I lie to you?"

Meelo sighed and began a long-winded explanation: "Well now when I meet them, my opinion of my aunts and uncles is going to be tarnished, and, by extension, so will my opinion of my cousins. And then I'll be just like you and I'll hate everyone I'm related to. Remember what happened when I met Gran-Gran?"

Tenzin laughed, though his son's face was deadpan. The memory was clear in Tenzin's head—at five years old, the first and only time Meelo had met his grandmother before she died, he had asked his father if this was "the cranky one". This behavior continued throughout their trip to the South Pole.

"You're twelve now, Meelo. You can probably hold in your opinions better than that. And when were you planning on meeting them?"

"Whenever you're planning on taking me," Meelo said, putting on his most charming smile. "But not yet," he held up the picture of Avatar Korra. "We have to wait for the message saying she's with Aunt Yeshe. I want to meet her."

The father nodded, considering the idea but putting most of his attention on the meal in front of him.

"And you want to meet her too, don't you, Dad?"

He raised an eyebrow at the girl in the picture. "She looks…Grumpy."

"But it will be like seeing your dad again, won't it?" Meelo turned the picture to face him. "You didn't mind him like your mom or sisters or brothers."

"I didn't. I actually liked him a lot. But that's not him."

Meelo shook his head. "No, I'm pretty sure that's how reincarnation works, Dad."

Tenzin smiled and nodded in phony agreement. "I guess it is."

Meelo ate for a little while, his eyes looking dreamily out of the window beside him, towards the base of a mountain. "This is the temple he was from, right?"

The older airbender nodded.

"You must have been his favorite," Tenzin made no response but had a mischievous look on his face like he knew the answer to that question. "Uncle Lobsang must have been mad."

"Furious, actually."

They both laughed. "Can you imagine if you were in your thirties, a master airbender, your father's first son, and your thirteen-year-old brother who's not even good at bending gets it instead f you? And I was sent away to learn from Yeshe until I was seventeen anyways. I got Dad's temple, and Dad's city, and I'm not sure if Lobsang will ever forgive me for it."

Meelo smiled, always happy to hear anecdotes about his father's life, but didn't like to hear that his father lost _his_ father so young. "Will I get this temple when you die?"

"If you want it. If not, I'll give it to someone else in the family and you can go off and do whatever you please."

"I think I want it."

"Then I'll leave it to you," Tenzin assured his son; Meelo's pride at the thought of being in charge of Avatar Aang's home temple was showing. "Don't get too excited, now. I'm not planning on leaving you anytime soon."

"Good."

Tenzin smiled in an over-sentimental that he didn't feel was good for his mental health.

"I don't know how to take care of the temple yet."

Meelo dodged the soybean pod his father threw at him.


	13. Chapter 13

Botan's first reaction to Chie's news was to yell. His second was to stomp around the house and mumble to himself. His third was to drag Chie to see Yun's father and get the Hongse's opinion on things. She objected the entire way there, but the father and daughter ended up in front of Jin-Ho's house at any rate. Hisoka, Jin-Ho's wife, received them. She apologized that her husband was not home but promised that he would be back soon, and served them tea and steamed buns while they waited for him.

"How old are you now, Chie-dear?"

"I'm sixteen."

"Oh, grown already. You'll be out of your father's hair soon," she said with a smile.

Botan objected in his head but said nothing out loud.

They continued with shallow conversation for over half an hour; Chie doubted that this was all Hisoka had to offer. She seemed like a smart woman.

Jin-Ho arrived with Yun trailing behind him. Botan, Chie, and Hisoka stood up to meet them; the father and son looked surprised to see their guests.

"I didn't know you were visiting today," said Jin-Ho sincerely, "I wouldn't have stayed out so long."

"No," said Botan, "We didn't plan this; it was—" He looked at his daughter, "sudden."

The man would normally be annoyed by unannounced visits, and while the urgency Botan conveyed certainly justified this one, he was more interested in fulfilling his curiosity about what Chie could have done to warrant this appointment. "Oh," said Jin-Ho as he sat down. "Should my son leave us to our privacy?"

"It doesn't matter," said Chie quietly, only to be overshadowed by her father's much stronger voice—he said something to the same effect.

Yun sat down, followed by Hisoka, Botan, and Chie.

Botan told them the story, the offers, the threats; Jin-Ho said that unconditionally, Chie had to reject the offer. They would make due, somehow.

Chie interjected. "Excuse me, but there was something my father didn't mention."

Jin-Ho straightened up. "Yes?"

"The Xun party needs metalbenders for something which factories and workers cannot do. And metal is what the city's factories, bridges, buildings—everything is made of," She looked up to see if anybody's face had softened since Jin-Ho's original decision. "If I could learn how to bend stronger, industrial metals, it would be useful to our cause."

Everybody seemed to be listening a little bit more closely.

"I could teach other people."

"This is true," said Yun softly; he looked to his father for approval.

"It is."

Jin-Ho thought for what seemed to be a very long time. "Your family should make the decision on its own," he said, "However, you have my support should you choose to accept; and I will make sure the Hongse backs you."

After some far more lighthearted conversation, Botan excused himself and his daughter. It was already dark. They walked home without speaking to each other until they reached their front door.

"What do you want me to do?" Chie asked her father.

"I want you do agree to the Xun party's offers."

Chie nodded, kissed her father on the cheek, called a "goodnight" to him and her mother, and went to bed.

There were no deliveries for Chie the next day and little work for Botan and Midori, a threat that had been creeping up for a while. Botan excused his daughter from working for the day and gave her a copper piece to spend out in the city. She accepted it, but returned immediately to her room and put it into her savings. She spent the next two hours getting ready under the curious eye of her mother. She dressed in the clothes that Indira had given her the day before and did her hair and makeup with more care than she had ever used in the past few years.

"I'm going to lunch, Mom!" she called, making sure to already be halfway out the door. "Bye, Dad!"

She set out towards the bridge. A girl was working there and the morning queue had already dissipated enough that Chie was let through with only the minor stop of having her passport checked.

An idling car waited on the edge of the street at the other side of the bridge; as Chie approached, a driver climbed out and opened the back door for her. She smiled at the driver and sat down. "Good morning, Xun Deng."

"Good morning, Chie," he said before waving to the driver as a cue for him to go.

The ride was silent; Chie concentrated on watching out the window and not being nauseous; Deng did not want to disrupt this.

They pulled up to a small restaurant. The driver let Deng out, who opened the door for Chie. The party member told the other man to be back in around an hour.

The inside was dim and a little smoky; a woman on a dais played the pipa over a dozen different conversations. They were seated quickly by a waitress who apparently knew Deng well. He ordered for the both of them and lit a cigarette.

Chie looked over the room. Everyone around them seemed very wealthy, from the men dressed to business to their dates in pearls and silk. Chie wondered if this meeting was Deng's subtle way of showing her what life could be like if she accepted his offer.

The drinks arrived and after the waitress backed away, Deng exhaled. "So, have you talked this over with your parents yet?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"I'll do it," she said quickly and nervously; she wondered if Deng somehow knew her plan.

He raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure? I mean, I'm very happy that you chose to, but you shouldn't rush into things."

"I'm sure."

Deng smiled. "And here, I thought this meal would be wasted with compromises and me trying to be persuasive."

"Wouldn't want that," agreed Chie, voice dull.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: I really don't mean to be one of those authors, but I haven't had a review in quite some time and it's a little discouraging. I would love your input.**

"Feet off the table, dear," Hinto said as he walked past the desk Kiet was sitting at.

"Whatever, Mom," sighed Kiet, planting his feet firmly on the ground, but his chin moved to the desk's surface. He wondered where all the injured people were, today.

Jo chuckled at the exchange as she watched out the window, folding towels. "You could pick some things up for us, if you're so bored," she offered, her voice thick with a Foggy Swamp accent.

"Eh."

She laughed again, but Hinto shot Kiet a dirty look; he didn't want Kiet to get on the bad side of their boss. Kiet rolled his eyes in response—Jo _obviously_ appreciated him greatly.

The office had been empty of anybody except for its three employees for most of the day. Jo resolved this by beginning to clean and organize everything, but she rejected any help from Hinto and Kiet, citing that they wouldn't do it right. Hinto had been doing menial tasks in the downtime—replacing the barrels' water, looking over the healers' records.

A middle-aged woman entered the building and Kiet enthusiastically began his sole task of receptionist. "Hello, welcome to Big Sister Jo's Healing Hut, how may we—Oh." The woman walked past Kiet and instead went straight to Jo. She thanked her a few times and handed over a large platter of kimchi. It was an installation of payment, as she had little money to spare. Jo smiled and accepted it and the woman left.

"Hinto, wasn't that the woman whose wrist _you_ fixed last month?"

"Isn't it always?"

Jo made more of an impression than Hinto did: she was fat, especially in the hips, with big hair and a bigger voice. Her accent and sweetness only made her more memorable; there weren't many from the Foggy Swamp in the Republic City, and even fewer who resolved to keep their traditional way of speaking.

Hinto didn't mind he knew Jo's personality overshadowed all others', even Kiet's. He took the food from her and put it into the icebox to save for later. He took a look outside of the window and noted that the end of the day approaching.

No sooner had he noted the winter sky's darkening did it light up again, accompanied by a low, loud, wall-shaking sound. Hinto pulled Jo underneath a table while Kiet ducked below his desk. However, Jo jumped back up immediately when she assessed that their building had not been hit. She went over to Kiet.

"Not queasy, are ya?"

Chie's meeting with Deng extended long past lunch. After he paid, Deng bid the driver to take him back to his office, where his secretary gathered papers which he and Chie went over together. She signed an agreement to allow a special benders' passport that would get her unlimited access of the city; she signed a contract for a paid apprenticeship for a man named Shi Bohai; she waved the offer of a house in a non-bending district of the city, but Deng told her that he would save the form, "Just in case you change your mind." He sent a boy about Chie's age to run the papers to another office, where more signatures would be put on them for approval. Chie sat in the waiting room outside during this time, listening to the radio and the clicking of the secretary's typewriter until the man on the airwaves announced, "It's five in the afternoon and you're listening to the Republic Broadcasting Board, where we have what we're being told will be a very important speech from Minister Xun Wei Bei. This was only publicized this morning but our listeners will trust that—"

Deng poked his head out of his office, where he was doing unrelated paperwork, and ordered his secretary to turn off the radio.

Following a visit from the young Gong Xun member, Deng beckoned Chie back into his office. The papers had made their way across the street and up the building, only to have to be approved again by Deng. Chie sat down across from him as he skimmed through the forms, sparing the occasional wary glance at the other man in the room. He smiled at Chie—something like a look of solidarity. "Do you know the pledge, Chie?"

She nodded.

"Say it for me, please."

The earth bender repeated the city-state's pledge; it was all equality and sovereignty and fidelity and unity—she stuttered on the unity part, but Deng was able to mouth her through it.

"Alright, very good," he said breezily and with his big smile, "We can take you home now."

The Gong Xun cleared his throat. Chie did not turn around to see him, but watched Deng's face—his raised eyebrows, his head shaking slowly from side to side. Finally, he stood up and told Chie to come with him; the Gong Xun followed. They took the elevator down together and got into a Xun Party car, where the younger, silent man, took the driver's seat. Deng told him to drive to the Lion-Dog Hotel, to which the man in black raised his eyebrows, perhaps in disapproval. But Deng quickly reminded him who was in charge of whom.

"Xun Deng," Chie said quietly, looking out through the windshield over the Gong Xun's shoulder, "Where are you taking me?"

Deng thought for a moment. "There's a riot in your district and the bridges across the Quanzi are closed. I'm putting you up in a hotel for the night."

They rode without speaking the rest of the way. Chie wondered about her friends and her families, but violence in her part of the city was nothing new. She made eye contact with the Gong Xun in the rearview mirror, but she quickly looked out the window.

From the outside, the Lion-Dog looked huge—it was tall and hexagonal, its walls interrupted with an uncountable number of windows. From the inside, it was even grander: all marble and gold and satin. "Are you sure this is necessary?" she had asked Deng as he waited to be handed a key from the receptionist.

"Xun Party's paying for it." He winked.

Deng introduced Chie to a bellhop and instructed her to ask an employee for anything she needed. Then he left.

Her room was high up and once inside she asked the boy attending her for a radio and a map—both were already in the room. "There's a list of stations next to it," he told her before asking if there was anything else he could do and finally leaving.

Chie spread the map out on her bed and turned on the radio, briefly toying with the idea that perhaps she was being kidnapped.

The Republic City's news station was covering the riot, as were both of its music stations. She didn't bother to look at the numbers and instead turned the dials until she heard clear sound—after a few tries, she found what she wanted and sat down.

"We have here a transcript and, later, an analysis, of Xun Wei Bei's speech to the citizens of her Republic City today," After some further explanation, the man switched to a woman speaker, who read the announcement for the world to hear. Chie didn't know where things were going until the last lines.

"And it is for these reasons that in the State of the Republic City, expecting compliance to the Noninterference Treaty of the Year of the Virtuous Harmony Snake, will ban all acts of bending within its borders. Thank you."

Deng got into the car.

"What do you think?" asked the Gong Xun.

"She still has an allegiance to the other benders, perhaps even the Hongse," He sighed. "I don't trust her, but I think she trusts me."

"She's only sixteen, sir."

"She's only sixteen," Deng repeated. After some time, he told the boy, "Take me home, then."


	15. Chapter 15

Indira, a blue robe tied over her sepulchral whites, hit the dragon's nose ring up against its brass face four times; she then folded her arms and waited, staring at the red door. A very old man answered. "Hello?"

"I'm here to see Hieu."

He opened the door all the way and stood at the threshold. "Do you have an appointment with him?"

"My name's Indira."

The servant thought for a moment before leading Indira into the house.

Her eyes grazed along the tiled floors and long rugs, the polished wood and pristine walls, until the servant stopped her in front of a series of arches that opened into what she knew as the dining room. She was told to wait, and she did.

"It's Indira, sir."

"Oh," A pause. "Let her in."

He didn't even stand, and Indira didn't expect him to. She waited; when her father told his servant to leave them, she approached. "You've heard."

"I have."

"I wasn't expecting you to perform her funeral rights."

"I wasn't intending to." Indira's father spoke with the verbal equivalent of a shrug. He ate as his daughter spoke, a breakfast of noodles and hoddeok.

Indira hesitated, and she felt a lump in her throat from waiting too long to speak. Finally, with a voice louder than she had intended to use, she ordered, "Listen to me, Hieu."

The simple use of his first name got Hieu to stand up. "Don't you dare call me that."

"I already did,"Somehow, the cowardice in the face of her father had made Indira more brash, but she still flinched when he rushed over to her. "Don't touch me," she threatened, taking a few steps away from the man.

He laughed. "You can't bend here, Indira."

She stood up straight. "I don't care," she said slowly, gaining her confidence back as she went; she never felt this small with anybody else. "Listen to me, and don't you dare touch me. I could burn this whole house down and you could put me in prison, but I wouldn't care."

Indira took Hieu's silence as an agreement. "You loved her," she told him; it wasn't a question. "At one point, you did. And I loved her too. And let me tell you something, Hieu. That's not how you treat someone you love, or anyone at all."

"I did nothing."

"It was your fault!" she cried, loud enough that Hieu grabbed her arm and warned her to shut up. He was afraid that the servants would hear.

"She was in prison for assault, Indira; do you really think I could have released her?"

"Yes!" Indira wiped the tears from her face and tried to maintain her composure, but it wasn't working; her father let her go.

"Soonee is dead," said Hieu, walking away and tracing his hand over the side of his long, wooden dining table that was raised from the ground. He disappeared into another room, from which Indira could hear a drawer open and close. A white envelope with black, calligraphic writing on its front was in his hand. "Condolence money."

"You disgust me," she said, voice small and devastated.

He shoved the envelope into his daughter's hand. "Go," he said.

Indira stormed out of the dining room and through the rest of her father's house; she had planned on leaving right away, but came across a large room that was being decorated by over a dozen servants. She walked into the open door and cleared her throat.

Then she yelled.

"My name is Indira, and my mother died in prison yesterday for a crime she didn't commit," she shrieked; everybody in the room stopped to listen, puzzled looks on their faces. "She was my father's first wife. Your employer's first wife. I was his first and only child. My father, the director of prisons in the Republic City!" She laughed. "Can you believe it? She was in prison for three years! Three years, and my father did nothing about it. But she's dead now."

The servants stared at the firebender, most of them wondering whether Hieu was really dead.

He could hear her from where he sat but decided not to do anything about it.

She placed an elbow on the doorway and leaned against it. "The funny thing is: I'm a firebender! But my mom was from the Northern Water Tribe. Bending doesn't just come from nowhere, you know. My father even paid for lessons until he joined the Xun party. Do you know what I could _do_ with that?" She bent over with laughter for a while before standing up straight again. "Wild, isn't it?" Indira asked before turning around, where a little boy dressed in fine clothing stood, watching the ordeal from the back. With a pat on the head, she whispered through new coming tears, "I hope you aren't a bender, kid."

As she neared the door, Indira had counted to ten enough times to stop crying. "That felt good," she mumbled to herself.

A tall, slim woman with loose black hair yawned as she walked into the dining room. The robe she wore was pale and thin, despite the weather. She wrapped her arms around her sitting husband.

"Who was yelling?" she asked.

"No one important," Hieu answered.

Indira ran to the nearest temple once she left her father's house; it was the temple where her mother's funeral was held hours earlier, and the head sage was surprised to see her again.

"I have a donation to make," she said. Inside of the condolence envelope were many bills of paper money, the type worth one hundred gold pieces each. The sage didn't accept it the first two offers, but when she insisted again, he finally led her to the front of the temple where a huge, iron bell hung.

Indira bent down low and rang the bell four times, as was customary. She hoped her father could hear it.

**A/N: Anon - Me? Update? Never.**


	16. Chapter 16

A group of young girls screamed as Kiet poured an iced bucketful of water atop their heads, but giggled after looking up and seeing the handsome earthbender waving at them from Indira's second-floor window. Indira rolled her eyes as she tied her hair up—the last adjustment before departing the safety of her apartment to the jungle of the Republic City's streets during New Year's.

Chie closed her fan and followed Indira and Hinto out the door. Kiet trailed in the back with a refilled bucket.

The streets really were wild—automobiles had to swerve around people just to get through the streets; Chie noticed a group of boys slinging water balloons at them. Indira gasped after being hit with one of them, especially since it had been frozen to slush, but the ice was a welcome change to the blazing head and humidity of the day. Hinto gave each of them a discreet hit of his water whip, all in good fun.

No Gong Xun could see a little bit of water bending through these crowds.

"I want food," Chie shouted over the noisiness around her.

"Yes," agreed Kiet.

On the way, each of the group ended up becoming soaked to the bone, mostly after passing a water refill station. Hinto rejected Indira's request for him to dry her off. "I'm not interfering," he said, "with the ancient festival of cleansing for the New Year," Indira frowned and he smiled. "Get into the spirit."

Indira grabbed an abandoned, running hose from the sidewalk and sprayed her three friends. Hinto laughed and retaliated, and then heaved the firebender over her shoulders and paraded her around to be the target of everyone who saw her.

The restaurant they went to gave all customers towels for the duration of their visit, but the stone floors were soaked anyways. Chie paid for the large platter of food. "Did Meelo say he was coming today?"

"He probably got distracted with the parade."

Meelo had, in fact, gotten distracted by the parade on his way to the non-bending districts. More specifically, he had gotten distracted by the float with all the pretty girls waving at him. He was even further distracted when one invited him onto the float and handed him a bucket of candy to throw onto the streets. By the time that he was invited to stop for lunch with them, Meelo had forgotten why he was even in the city at all.

He remembered shortly after a screaming man kicked him back onto the street.

From the hulking buildings, Meelo knew he was in the city's center—or at least its urban center, because this part of the Republic was right on the harbor.

The airbender began his blind trek to get to the bending districts, which he knew much better; but in the crowd of the festival, especially in the crowd of _this_ festival, it was difficult. He figured that getting off of the main street would be a good first order of business, but he was struck by a sight he saw on the way there.

There was a tall girl—Water Tribe, from her appearance and her clothing—unashamedly bending any airborne water away from her; with a flick of her wrist, it fell to the ground, sometimes freezing on the way. An animal, huge and white and furry, trotted at her side; it opened its mouth to take in any water offered. Meelo followed behind them slowly, but when he noticed more and more eyes turning in the girl's direction, he ran up beside her. She didn't notice him, or didn't care; her eyes seemed to be scanning for something far off. "You have to stop that," he warned.

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "I don't want to get wet."

Meelo looked around, confused. "You know about the ban, don't you? It came into effect months ago."

"I know about it," she said, continuing her illegal bout of bending. "I don't care."

He searched around for people looking at them and, of course, there were many; Meelo couldn't see any in Gong Xun members (obvious, as they wore long, black robes even in the hottest of weather), but he knew it would only be a matter of time. He pulled the waterbender onto a side street. She resisted successfully, being much stronger than him, but followed along after hearing Meelo's pleas.

"Are you crazy?" he asked after checking for suspicious company in every direction.

"Am_ I_ crazy?" the girl asked, giving Meelo the up-and-down.

Meelo coughed awkwardly and squeezed the water out of a handful of his hair. The waterbender shrugged and walked away; the airbender caught up with her. "You must not be around here." From her clothes, she had obviously come from the Water Tribes.

"Nope."

"Why would you come here? Didn't you know about the ban? Before you came here?"

"I did. Everybody does," After a deep breath, she answered his first question. "Look, kid. I'm trying to find somebody. I've been searching for a week but nobody I ask has even heard of him. His name isn't even in the census records," She leaned, defeated, against a brick wall. "I think he might have left when they banned bending, or something."

Meelo looked around them and sat on the base of a streetlamp. "He's a bender?"

She nodded.

"How much of the city have you searched through?"

The girl pulled out a half-crumpled, half-folded map of the city. Parts of it had been shaded in—parts of the non-bending parts of the city. "All the shaded places. Nobody recognized his name."

"No wonder," Meelo said, shaking his head. He traced the Quanzi River on the map. "Everything north and east of this river isn't accessible to benders."

"What?" she knitted her dark eyebrows together and turned the map around to get a better look at it. "That's just a rumor. The people at the immigration bureau told me not go to here because these are all people who live off the government," Her voice began to trail. "I know this man to live comfortably…"

"Hah," was all Meelo could think to say. The animal at the girl's side sneezed.

The girl looked very angry for a second, and Meelo realized he recognized her.

"Wait a second!" he shouted.

"What?" she asked, a bit startled at the sudden outburst.

Meelo looked around again, eyeing passers-by, before saying in a very loud whisper, "You're Avatar Korra, aren't you?" He fiddled around in his pockets but realized her picture was probably lost somewhere months ago.

"Yep," she said casually, before kicking off from the wall and beginning to walk again. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got an airbender to find and an immigration officer to speak to."

"You're looking for an airbender?" he yelled down the street, despite the people who undeniably heard him. Korra turned around and nodded, and Meelo ran to her side. "Is his name Meelo?"

"No."

The airbender frowned and trudged beside the girl for a few seconds before asking. "Is his name Tenzin?"

Korra stopped. "Do you know him?"


End file.
